Sticky Lavender
by brite knee
Summary: Dodie moves from a small town to an even smaller town. There, she meets this guy named Edward. Chaos ensues. AU. Edward&OC.
1. Grownup Hands

**A/N:** This story is labeled as AU due to the fact that there is no Bella. As in, she never came to Forks; she might've never even existed - I'll leave that up to your imagination.

* * *

**Chapter One**

It was the first day of Spring and it didn't fill like it in the least. As Dodie pulled one last box from the backseat of her mother's Altima, a shiver wracked the frame of her body and she hastily pushed the car's door closed with the heel of her right shoe, heading towards the shelter of the much-despised house.

The house. It had a cheery enough exterior, almost like a children's hospital that helped parents lure their little younglings in to extract their tonsils with false promises of an abundance of ice cream and free cable television (when, after getting said tonsils out, you were too uncomfortable to eat the ice cream and the TV provided only hospital-sponsored channels that informed one how to maintain a well-balanced diet). The second you stepped inside the house, though, you were accosted with a sticky lavender paint job that screamed for you to get out and save yourself while you could. Her mother had tried to fix the lavender living room up, adding all sorts of decorative touches: abstract pieces of art she had purchased from the gallery that was located down the street from their old house, white lace curtains over the windows, a few random vases of flowers, framed family photos (indeed, the overall effect was somewhat overwhelming to the eye, and distracted a bit from the paint job).

"Dorothy!" her mother's shrill voice rang through the house, snapping her out of her reverie. "Come here for a sec, will you?"

Dodie dropped the cardboard box on the loveseat in the sticky lavender room and headed to the back of the house where her mother's voice had come from. She poked her head into the first door on the left (a bathroom), but no mother there; no luck, either, in the door across the hallway, but that was a closet and Dodie hadn't expected to find her there. In the last door on the right, though, Dodie found Bonnie, her mother, a color swatch in both hands and staring studiously at the walls in the master bedroom. She held the one in her left hand with her long fingers against the bland white wall nearest her.

"What do you think?" Bonnie asked critically, cocking her head like a confused dog.

"Aw, c'mon, Mom, it's _brown_. Oliver _hates_ brown."

"No, it's _gold_."

"He'll still hate it."

"Since when does he hate gold?" The older woman sighed dramatically and crumpled the gold-colored swatch into a tight ball, throwing it to an empty corner of the room.

"Now _I_, on the other hand," Dodie said suavely, "thoroughly enjoy the wonderful color that is brown-"

"-it's _gold_-"

"-so feel free, at any time, to paint my room." Dodie paused. "But not gold; I want a good, solid brown."

Bonnie's cell phone chose the moment to ring, interrupting their petty bantering.

"Hello?" Pause. "Oh, hey, Ollie."

Dodie liked her brain cells, and was in fact very fond of them, so she chose to slip out of her mother and step-father's bedroom in favor of her own. Bonnie and Oliver (said step-father) had a tendency to speak in complete gibberish with each other ("Hewo, my wittle pumpky-pie!"), and it was not endearing in the least.

Bonnie Cooper-Wilkins (née Cooper) was the type of woman who strived to please everyone around her. She endeavored to have dinner on the table for Oliver when he got home from work, she was nice to everyone so they wouldn't think bad of her, and she tried to be the best mother possible to Dodie (in a semi-endearing up-in-her-face kind of way).

Oliver Cooper-Wilkins (né Wilkins), on the other hand, was as down-to-earth as any man of the male species came. It never mattered to him whether or not Bonnie had cooked dinner that night (after all, he had a car and a wallet, and no doubt there was a McDonald's around somewhere), he could care less what people really thought of him, and he had enough grace to let Dodie grow up and figure things out on her own.

No matter how many stories Dodie had read where the protagonist despised their step-parent, she hardly found this the case for herself. Oliver, in all reality, was more a father than her real one had ever been.

* * *

"Dodie," her mother said affably the next morning, "you know you don't have to do this, right? I mean, I'm _sure_ we could wait another week or so to, erm, let you get settled in and all. How 'bout it?" She knew her mother never referred to her as 'Dodie' (instead of the usual 'Dorothy') unless she wanted something – badly. Bonnie's long fingers clenched and unclenched around the steering wheel of her Altima worriedly as they headed to Forks High.

"Mom, it's not like we can put this off forever. Lay off it, please; you're acting like I'm leaving for the Armed Forces or something."

Bonnie's face darkened briefly and her eyebrows contracted. "Dorothy, don't say that."

"Sorry."

The remainder of the drive went on in silence. Dodie ran her nails along the legs of her jeans in agitation. When the car stopped in front of the school's office, Bonnie placed a cool hand over her daughter's, stilling their frantic movements. "You know I hate it when you do that. It makes me want to grind my teeth."

Dodie smiled weakly. "You're so weird. The most random things bother you."

There was a noticeable pause. "You're nervous."

She could only nod tautly in response and wonder when her mother had become so observant – maybe it was just a mother thing. Dodie stared down at her mother's hand, still resting over her own. The skin was stretched over the back of her hand and tan from years of sun-exposure. After Bonnie pulled back (placing her fingers firmly around the steering wheel once again), Dodie stared at her own hands and wondered why they looked so..._kiddish_. She could barely see the bones of her knuckles unless she made a fist and her fingers felt thick and clumsy. Why couldn't she have pretty, _grownup_ hands like her mother?

"...could still come in with you, if you like, and help get you checked in at the office," Bonnie was offering when Dodie tuned back in and focused her attention away from her hands.

"No, no, that's not necessary." She glanced at the watch encircling her left wrist, and grabbed her bag out of the backseat, swinging it over the console in between the two front seats. "I should go; the bell rings in ten minutes."

"Behave. Make new friends. You know the drill."

Dodie smiled at her mother's attempt to be nonchalant. "Okay." She pulled the door handle open and swung out her legs, pausing only to say a rushed "bye" to Bonnie. She followed the stone path up to the building, carefully keeping her eyes turned away from the adjacent parking lot, and arrived in the office. The small room was bland and boring enough that Dodie didn't focus on the details of the décor.

A redheaded woman stood behind the desk and she smiled widely as Dodie strode forward, resting her forearms on the desk. "I'm Dodie – er, _Dorothy_ Cooper."

"Ah, yes," the secretary exclaimed excitedly, "the new student! I'm Mrs. Cope."

As Mrs. Cope went over Dodie's schedule with her, outlining where each classroom was located in each building, she had a feeling she'd be known as the "new student" all day.

Probably longer.

Dodie, walking out of the office only a few minutes later, idly made her way to the language building where she had first hour French. Her peers allowed her a wide berth, but their manic grins hidden behind their hands were not lost on Dodie. Clearly, a new student on campus was a big deal to them.

"_Bonjour_!" a loud voice called as she walked into the classroom with the last few stragglers. Dodie wordlessly handed the French teacher the slip Mrs. Cope had told her to have her teachers sign. "_Je m'appelle Madame Nelson. Comment t'appelles-tu?_"

She figured Madame Nelson was testing to see if she knew a lick of French; Dodie's name was clearly written on the slip of paper in front of the wrinkled teacher.

"Oh, _je m'appelle Dorothy_." She rushed on to elaborate, "But I prefer _Dodie_."

Madame Nelson switched back to English. "And besides this year, how long have you taken French?"

"One year."

"Ah, _bien, bien_." The teacher handed Dodie the slip, now signed, and gave her a gentle push towards an empty seat in the back row of the classroom. Squeezing through the desks, Dodie was able to reach the empty one and dropped her bag by the leg and slid into the seat, pointedly keeping her head focused on the front of the classroom and ignoring the stares of her over-curious classmates.

"You dropped this."

Dodie could have chosen to let the voice go unacknowledged, but there was just something about its tinkling soprano depth. As she looked over to the speaker, it was if an invisible hand had grabbed her chin and forcefully directed her gaze to the left. Dodie's eyes went wide.

"You dropped this," the girl (yet she seemed so much more than just a simple girl, or teenager; there should have been a more in-depth word to describe her, but Dodie couldn't recall any) repeated, smiling in a way that was supposed to be encouraging. Dodie tore her eyes away from the "girl" and down to the extended hand where her favorite ballpoint pen rested.

"Oh. Right. Thanks." She snatched the pen away and averted her gaze to the scratched surface of the desk where some poor soul has scribbled a deformed heart into the wood. It took all of Dodie's self-control not to look to her left. She was just so...exquisite (though, again, the word seemed inadequate). Her features were small, pixie-like in a way, and her dark hair was cropped, pointing in every which direction. And her eyes – they were like liquid gold.

There was a sharp clap of hands as the French teacher stood behind her lectern, attempting to capture the rowdy classroom's attention. "_Bonjour, la classe_!" she crowed. "We are very fortunate to have a _new student_ with us today." Madame Nelson smiled at Dodie expectantly from the front of the classroom. "Well? Introduce yourself, won't you?"

Dodie grimaced and the class snickered at her obvious disgust at the attention. She pulled herself out of the desk, though, and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her pants. "Uh, I'm Dorothy. And no, before you ask, I don't have a dandy little terrier named Toto, nor do I think there is 'no place like home.'" The girl from her left giggled quietly as Dodie resumed her seat, but she resisted the urge to look at her and, for the rest of the class, her eyes were glued to the front of the classroom as Madame Nelson explained the French _passé composé_.

The bell rang, signaling the end of first-hour classes, and Dodie swung herself out of her seat, grabbing her bag from the floor and hastily stuffing her newly-acquired French book and favorite ballpoint pen in with it. Though she kept her eyes carefully trained away from the face of the pixie-like girl, she couldn't help but notice, as she too collected her bag, her grownup hands and how the skin stretched perfectly across the back of it, not a wrinkle in sight.

* * *

6/13/10 - edited format.


	2. Frizzy Hair

**A/N:** Boring chapter is, well, rather boring. More E and A next go-round.

* * *

**Chapter Two**

Second period was Government, but Dodie could really care less about the class and she took her time getting there, only arriving approximately twelve seconds before the late bell rang. The teacher, who stood at the front of the class flipping through a textbook, gave her a withering glance. She noticed, as the man was signing the slip of paper Mrs. Cope had given her, that he had a receding hairline, but couldn't really take the time to examine any of his other features.

"There's an empty seat at the back," he said and handed her the slip of paper, turning his back on Dodie without another word.

Feeling blatantly rebuffed after Mrs. Cope and Madame Nelson's show of excitement at the idea of a new student, she frowned. While she wasn't someone who basked in the glory of attention and adoration, she did, however, like feeling welcome. Clearly this was too much to ask of the weedy man who was to teach her Government.

She trudged to the back of the classroom and took her seat at the empty desk, wondering why, once again, she was seated in the empty desk at the back of the room – weren't teenagers supposed to be mentally frustrated and enjoy sitting as far from the teacher as possible? A cold something dropped on her right shoulder and she jumped, squeaking. Dodie looked up at the ceiling of the classroom and groaned at the rather large water stain.

So that was why this desk was empty.

The teacher (whose name she had yet to uncover) was still flipping through the textbook as if it were written by God himself, absorbed in its pages, when Dodie covertly pushed the desk and herself slightly to the left, closer to her neighbor who sat next to the wall in the back row and further from the leak in the roof.

She hadn't even bothered to glance at any of the other students in the classroom until then. She saw a few from her French class (minus the pixie-like girl who had recovered her pen), but knew none of their names. She studied her neighbor from the corner of her eye. He was breathtaking in the same context as the girl from French, with the obvious exception of being more handsome than anything. His hair had a reddish tint to it – one that Dodie had always tried unsuccessfully to achieve through cheap non-permanent hair dyes (the only ones her mother would allow her to buy; "You have beautiful hair," she had always said condescendingly, "why would you want to destroy it?"). He was currently focused on twirling a pencil in his fingers around and around; he honestly looked bored, which Dodie found to be understanding as she focused her attention back at the front of the classroom – this teacher who taught such a boring subject seemed to be equally, if not more, dull; she couldn't figure out what was so fascinating about that textbook he had remained glued to since she had stepped foot into the classroom.

Her neighbor (she mentally resolved to give him the name Al, feeling honestly tired of referring to him as her "neighbor") next to her snorted (elegantly, mind you) as if enjoying a private joke, but she paid him no mind for the rest of the period. (The teacher somehow eventually found the self-control to pull himself away from the textbook and give the class instructions to read chapter ten and write a one-page summary; the class complied grudgingly.)

Third period was English. Dodie was fortunate enough to be in possession of a good teacher who graciously introduced herself and briefly outlined the course, even giving her a syllabus and a copy of the book they were currently reading (a translated version of _Candide _by Voltaire). Al from her previous class was there as well, but he sat on the complete opposite side of the room of her and, as an added distraction, Dodie sat next to a bouncy girl with a mouth problem (i.e. it didn't shut properly).

"So your name's Dodie, right?"

"Um, yeah, it is."

"Oh." A pause and a flicker of understanding. "Like the bird?"

"N—" Dodie started, but stopped herself. Her negative answer would, undoubtedly, raise yet more questions. "Sure." While the comparison of her name to the extinct Dodo bird slightly irked her, she found the attempts of the dark-haired chatterbox of a classmate to get to know her oddly endearing. Had their roles been switched, Dodie was without a doubt that she would have simply ignored a new student, merely because she wouldn't feel it was her duty to make them feel comfortable.

It's not that she was antisocial; to put it bluntly, she was just somewhat lazy, a common enough quality in those of her age.

And you could say that, because of her laziness, gym was certainly not one of her favorite classes. She had never really seen the point of physical education – was the act of throwing foam balls at her classmates really supposed to encourage teamwork and good sportsmanship? Was it really supposed to make her a better person, taking aim at the awkward kid, Eric, from her Government class? She didn't think so.

But she participated anyway, simply for the effort grade.

As it turned out, Al was, yet again, in her class. Huh. Dodie wasn't sure if she were lucky or just severely unfortunate. As he tossed a flamboyantly-colored foam ball back and forth with Pixie from her French class (while not as classy as the nickname Al, it would simply have to do), she seized another opportunity to study him from afar. Perhaps, like Pixie, there were no real words that could be put to his presence, but she could try.

He was graceful; that much was obvious. The lilt of his arm as it arced and swung the ball away from him was smooth and full of power. Fast, too. His skin was pale, almost sickly, and he was rather slender.

Really, she could go on and on, but she stopped there and turned back to whatever it was the coach was yelling about. Something about not hitting people in the face and whatnot, but her brain was drifting with her stomach, somewhere along the sidewalk outside of the gym building that led to the cafeteria…

The bell signaling lunch rang and her stomach gave a particularly unattractive gurgle, both sounds completely synchronized. She fell into a line of girls that were heading off to the locker room to change back to their normal clothes and followed them outside and to the other end of the campus towards the lunch room. It was when she arrived in said cafeteria and joined the queue for food that she realized she didn't really have anyone to sit with. The thought made her frown minutely. As she grabbed a Styrofoam plate to pile grub on, she covertly darted her eyes around the spacious room of food-driven teenagers.

Dark haired, chatty girl from her English class sat with a group of raucous, conceited looking girls in the dead center of everything having a grand old time. They were probably discussing the latest season of some Bravo reality show and comparing shades of nearly identical rouge nail polish.

Geeky Eric was leaning up against his yearbook editor girlfriend, Angela, and sharing a tray of tater tots at a table in the far corner (she knew Angela's name because the gentle brunette had graciously introduced herself after Government and let Dodie know to ask if she needed any help).

Both Al and Pixie had moved to a table that was devoid of any other students in the rear of the spacious room, forsaking the lunch line entirely. As Dodie approached the cash register to pay for her greasy meal (she would really have to remember to pack her lunch tomorrow), she idly wondered if they were seeing one another. The careful space the two kept between themselves, however, seemed to say otherwise.

In an effort to avoid mind-numbing conversation, forced politeness, and downright awkward silence (all ordered respectively), she steered clear of the aforementioned three tables and retreated to a vacant one by the cafeteria entrance. At least that way, Dodie told herself, she could make a quick getaway when the bell rang and high-tail it to Calculus (and successively procure a seat that wasn't under a leaky patch of ceiling).

Calc, as it turned out, would be her only escape from both Al and Pixie. She was able to take a breather from their flashy, attention-grabbing presence and immerse herself in math – her best friend. It was her good fortune that Forks High's Calculus class was slightly behind her old school's course and so she was able to pass the lesson on volumes of solids of revolution in relative peace of mind, working ahead of her peers on that night's assigned problem set.

Her peace of mind, however, was interrupted during her last class of the day as Mr. Banner, her biology teacher, directed her to the only free seat in the classroom – right next to Pixie.

Dodie did not dislike the girl. On the contrary, she was sure she was a rather charming person. The only problem she could credit to her name (er, nickname) was that she radiated _perfect_. Her cropped hair was perfect, every tendril flawlessly disarrayed. Her unblemished skin was perfect, not a freckle or imperfection to be seen. Her clothes – good God, her clothes – they would make a model frown in shame at their own lacking designer attire.

Dodie didn't do perfect. Her frizzy hair she left to air-dry and used no product on, instead leaving it to curl in the moist air. Her skin, while only marred by teenage acne around that time of the month, still sported its battle-wounds (she had a scar she was rather proud of on the top of her knee from a nasty fall) and a random array of freckles from summer trips to the Gulf Coast with her mother. Her clothes came from various resources – hand-me-downs, flea market bargains, clearances at large retail stores.

Obviously, neither girl had much in common. With that fact settled, Dodie flipped idly through her new biology book, not bothering to look in Pixie's direction.

But if she expected Pixie to respect the silence, she was caught extremely off-guard.

"I don't think we've been properly introduced," a lilting voice said to her left. Dodie's head popped up from the confines of a section dedicated to osmosis. "My name is Alice Cullen. You're a senior too, right?"

"Uh, yes, I am. I'm—"

"Dorothy Cooper, I know," Pix—Alice cut in.

"I prefer Dodie, but yeah," she replied, scratching at a nonexistent itch on her arm for something to do with her hands.

"It's really nice to meet you, Dodie. Forgive me – I've not gotten a chance before now to say hello; it's been a very distracting day."

It took an extreme amount of effort, but Dodie stopped her scratching and instead settled her hands clasped in her lap. "Oh? Don't worry about it. I'm the new kid; it'll just take a while for me to adjust."

"Yes, but you sat all alone today at lunch."

"S'not a big deal," she insisted. "I'm just not good around new people—"

"That may be the case," Alice interrupted (she seemed rather skilled at doing so), "but I insist you sit with myself and my brother tomorrow. We're probably not the best company, but I'm sure we're a lot better of an option than sitting alone."

Dodie had never met such an assertive, yet pleasant, person. She was unsure as to whether she should be pleased or disgusted. She settled, instead, for a medium degree of confused.

"I really appreciate that, Alice, but we've just met, you know? Shouldn't you take the time to get to know me and make sure I'm mentally stable before you invite me to sit with you and your family at lunch? I could be a hazard," she joked.

Alice smiled a smile that Dodie could only interpret as an inside joke. "I'm sure whatever your mental status, Edward and I will be quite safe. We get a lot of protein; I think we could both take you down if the situation called for it."

"Oh. That's good, then."

Mr. Banner took that moment to shut his classroom door and begin the unit on mitosis. Dodie, usually turned off by science, was able to maintain a relative amount of interest in the lesson only because of Alice's whispered commentary. It seemed the fashion enthusiast was an aspiring scientist.

"No, that's hardly the case," she whispered in reply when Dodie voiced this thought aloud to her. "I just have a lot of time on my hands and my father is a doctor – he has a modest library on biology subjects that I've perused."

At the end of the lesson, Alice paused after collecting her things while Dodie stowed her notebook away in her bag. "I expect to see you at our lunch table tomorrow. I'd hate to embarrass you by having to drag you over." With that said, her petite classmate strolled out of the classroom, a skip in her step.

* * *

Oliver picked her up that afternoon in his hunter green Jeep after she dropped her slip full of teacher's signatures off with Mrs. Cope. "How was school?" he asked without hesitation as she slid into the passenger seat, lodging her backpack on the floorboard between her knees.

"Excruciatingly long," was Dodie's short reply. She was still slightly reeling from Alice's persistent kindness.

"Make any friends?"

"Uh, kind of."

He glanced at her funny, taking a right out of the car rider's pick-up line. "Kinda? How can you kinda be friends with someone?"

She laughed at his expression, his lopsided brows and pursed lips. "I have a few classes with this one girl, Alice, who was really nice to me. She's making me sit with her tomorrow at lunch."

"Ah, the forceful type, is she? That's exactly what you need, Dorothy."

"I am going to take that as a compliment, Liver," she replied, utilizing a nickname she had taken up a few years ago to respond with whenever he called her by her full first name. He pinched her on the side of the arm in retaliation.

"I'm sure whatever the case is with this Alice gal, whatever it is that's holding you back from being more than 'kinda' friends with her—" he flicked his right hand in her direction, while his left steered the vehicle, as if to show he wasn't really sure what was causing his step-daughter's hesitation "—that you'll get over it. You're in a new place and you'll need all the back-up you can get."

They pulled up to the house shortly after that. Dodie made her way through the sticky lavender living room and up to her bedroom. She spent the few hours before dinner on homework and unpacking knick-knacks, carefully filing away any thoughts for later perusal that didn't have anything to do with those two things.


End file.
